Lifetime Effects: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 40

HighScope’s Perry Preschool Study is one of the longest running and best known studies of the effects of preschool education. The study compares the lives of two groups of at-risk children, one group who had a high-quality preschool program in the 1960s and another who had no preschool program. This monograph reports the remarkable results of the latest phase of the study, looking at a wide range of factors in the lives of the two groups of study participants at the age of 40. The "preschool advantage” documented in this research includes higher lifetime earnings, greater employment stability, higher educational attainment, greater family stability, and dramatically reduced involvement with crime. Together these benefits result in a public benefit of almost $13 for every public dollar invested in the program.
With commentaries by James J. Heckman and Diana T. Slaughter-DeFoe.